Curator Watchlist
A devastating, clear-eyed working-class drama that turns everyday labor, debt, and family strain into something almost unbearable to watch. It’s especially strong if you want social realism with emotional force rather than easy catharsis.
Where to watch: Buy
Fri · 1h 41m
Director: Ken Loach
Starring: Kris Hitchen, Debbie Honeywood, Rhys Mcgowan
Ricky and his family have been fighting an uphill struggle against debt since the 2008 financial crash. An opportunity to wrestle back some independence appears with a shiny new van and the chance to run a franchise as a self-employed delivery driver. It's hard work, and his wife's job as a carer is no easier. The family unit is strong but when both are pulled in different directions everything comes to breaking point.
Ken Loach
Kris Hitchen, Debbie Honeywood, Rhys Mcgowan
A devastating, clear-eyed working-class drama that turns everyday labor, debt, and family strain into something almost unbearable to watch. It’s especially strong if you want social realism with emotional force rather than easy catharsis.
Ken Loach strips the drama down to the daily mechanics of survival: shifts, deliveries, school problems, unpaid bills, and the constant sense that one missed step can collapse everything. The result is painfully immediate. Nothing here feels symbolic in a glossy way; it feels observed, lived-in, and cruelly ordinary.
What makes the film hit so hard is its refusal to isolate one villain. The gig-economy system is the pressure point, but the movie is really about how that pressure seeps into marriage, parenting, and self-worth. The family’s love is real, which only makes the damage more upsetting.
This is not a comfortable watch, but it is a vital one. Loach’s realism can feel blunt by design, yet the emotional precision and social anger are hard to dismiss. It’s one of those films that leaves you drained because it has made the cost of precarious work impossible to ignore.
Karsten (4.5★) · 779 likes
I’m definitely checking out everything Ken Loach has done, starting with Kes. This was tragic and the saddest part is how real it is. The way it covers the fear and depressing aspects of literally normal people is...so smart, I am not doing it justice. Too many thoughts!
Laura (4★) · 511 likes
capitalism exhausts us and pushes us to the edge. the whole time i worried that someone was going to be pushed so hard that they fell off, in one way or another. but maybe the real misery is in how we fight to hold on to what we have left.
Allison M. 🌱 (5★) · 483 likes
Cannes 2019Film #9 “Who cares.” - Seb’s notebook Sorry We Missed You is a punch to the emotional gut. It follows a family in a tight economic situation that becomes more and more dire. The father works for an Amazon-type of company that considers him self-employed; he has no benefits, but carries all of the risks. The mother is an underpaid caretaker and is a true softie. The teenage son gets into trouble with his parents gone and the… more
˗ˏˋ suspirliam ˊˎ˗ (4.5★) · 405 likes
you know it’s a heavy one when you and the fam sit through the whole credits not speaking to each other...... so real and honest, this one hits hard 😔
Sean Baker · 381 likes
Will never miss a Ken Loach. Shot by Robbie Ryan on 16mm. Arriflex 416, Zeiss Master Prime and Ultra Prime LensesKodak Vision3 250D 7207, Vision3 200T 7213, Vision3 500T 7219 Watched Kino Lorber Blu-ray
A foundational British working-class drama with the same humane attention to labor, institutions, and a life narrowed by circumstance.
Another Ken Loach film that channels anger at systems into intimate, devastating human drama.
A more comic but still sharply working-class story about dignity, unemployment, and survival.
Loach’s compassionate look at poverty, pride, and the humiliations of trying to stay afloat.
A tough, empathetic portrait of working-class life and the fragile hope people cling to under pressure.
A raw social-realist drama about family instability, class pressure, and desperate choices.
A hard look at privatization and the erosion of working lives, with a similar anger at systems over people.
A labor-focused drama about precarious work and collective resistance, with strong social conscience.
A more surreal but equally savage critique of labor exploitation and corporate dehumanization.
For viewers interested in economic precarity and the quiet dignity of people living on the margins.
A vivid, heartbreaking look at poverty, parenting, and the instability hidden behind everyday life.
A compassionate family drama about survival outside the margins of formal economic security.
gig economy, working-class life, family strain, debt and precarity, labor exploitation, social realism, parenthood, institutional indifference
social realism, working class, gig economy, family drama, economic hardship, British cinema, bleak tone, labor politics, naturalistic acting, contemporary drama